


Hot and Cold

by MapToWhereIAlreadyAm



Category: Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Awkward Boners, F/M, Huddling For Warmth, Hypothermia, Nudity, Pre-Relationship, Pre-Star Wars: Rebels, Unresolved Sexual Tension, kanera2k17
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-28
Updated: 2017-05-28
Packaged: 2018-11-05 18:00:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11018649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MapToWhereIAlreadyAm/pseuds/MapToWhereIAlreadyAm
Summary: Hera and Kanan fall in a river. Hypothermia and sexual tension ensue!A fic for your classic trope cravings (and for Phase 1 of the Kanera Trope-Athon).





	Hot and Cold

There was little warning.

A slight creak was all. An ominous sound that made Kanan pause and cock his head.

Then a louder crack and Hera was gone. It happened so quickly that there wasn’t time to process where she had gone, before he too followed her, falling through the roof of the snow cave. As it was there was only enough time to let out a yelp before plunging into water so frigid that his heart skipped a beat or two. It was jolted into action again by a sound from Hera that he had never heard before — half shriek, half gasp — all alarming and very relatable.

They had been making their way across the snowfield, heading back with the information Hera’s isolated informant — more of a hermit, actually — had provided. The plan was to hike to the Phantom and from there to the Ghost and then pass on the intel to Fulcrum. But it appeared that plan would need to be adjusted due to their detour.

The subterranean river — no, it wasn’t underground, only a channel cut through the compacted drifts —was shallow and Kanan’s fall was short, but it was enough to knock all sense out of him. He found himself on his hands and knees, the water nearly to his armpits. Staggering to his feet, he gasped from the cold and the shock, struggling to get his bearings.

Hera spluttered next to him completely drenched having dunked under the surface. Ice chunks from the ceiling collapse floated past them, and light streamed through the opening they had created. Kanan could just make out a gravel covered shoreline, in the shadows. Hera was already making her way towards it, splashing in her hurry to get out of the freezing water.

She clambered out first and before turning to help to haul him out. The added weight of his wet clothing reminded him of being on heavy G planets, wherever every motion was ten times as hard. But what was more ominous was how stiff his muscles had become already.

“W-we need to s-strip,” Hera said through chattering teeth and stuttering puffs of breath in the cold air. She clawed at her parka until it fell to the ground with a splat, water still running off of it.

“Words I n-never thought I w-would hear you s-say,” Kanan quipped. His levity was undercut by the broken delivery of rattling teeth.

“Enj-j-joy it while y-you c-can.” He heard the smile in her voice, but he didn’t join her. There was an implied finality to her words that she probably didn’t mean.

He yanked his gloves off to shed his parka and then cursed under his breath when he discovered his shirt and undershirt were damp as well. Both came off, and he sucked in a breath at the cool air on his torso. The ambient air temperature was cold, but not nearly as cold as wet clothing sucking his body heat faster than he could generate it.

Adrenaline and the frigid temperatures were making it hard for him to think. Planning what to do next, he hadn’t gotten much beyond _get these damn clothes off_. But the reality was being naked in this weather was only slowing their death by exposure. It bought them time, but they would need to do something quickly.

He fumbled with his belt as violent waves of shivers made his body convulse. It took him three attempts to unfasten his fly (his fine motor skills were long gone as a deep chill had set in) and several sad attempts to kick his boots off and peel his socks down. Hooking his thumbs in the waistband of his pants, he hesitated. It wasn’t exactly bashfulness. More like an uncertainty of modesty standards in front of his captain. But then practicality set in. Everyone dies naked in some form or another. Dying with soggy britches because he was afraid that someone he had the hots for might see his cold nether regions was not how he wanted to go out.

Steeling himself, he pulled everything off, then wrapped his arms around chest and turned shivering towards Hera. She didn’t bat an eye at his nudity, being more focused on trying to remove her clothing. She was running into the same problem he had, which was warmblooded bodies didn’t behave the way they were intended when they were freezing. Gloves, boots and various other accessories were strewn about, but the closures of her top were giving her problems. Kanan tried to assist, but his fingers were just as clumsy.

“N-need to get out…” Her voice was subdued, but Kanan sensed the panic behind it.

Grimacing, he hooked his hands in the straps of her top and yanked.

“S-s-sorry,” he stammered as Hera stumbled and jerked from the manhandling, but it seemed to work. Buttons flew and fabric ripped, and she managed to shrug herself free. Satisfied at her progress, Kanan turned to take in their situation.

They had no spare clothes to change into. The Phantom was still at least an hour hike away, parked in the closest spot the rugged terrain safely allowed. Their crazy-old-man-in-the-woods informant was another half an hour walk in the opposite direction. But they were in no condition to dig their way out of this cave, let alone walk naked in the elements.

The cave felt moderately warmer than the outdoor temperature, which made sense. No wind. Running water and the gravelly shoreline suggested it was slightly above freezing, possibly from the beginning of the spring thaw or, if they were lucky, geothermal activity. Kanan wasn’t able to see far in the gloom past the illumination from the hole they punched through the ceiling, but it was possible the tunnel went further, and perhaps a hot spring was the cause of this cave. If they could find some insulation, some heat source, it would buy them enough time for a risky Chopper pick-up.

Hera apparently had the same idea, fumbling with the comm link. She was kneeling buck naked, bracing the device on the ground instead of holding it in her violently shaking hands. If their situation wasn’t so dire, Kanan’s thoughts might have dwelt on her unclothed state longer. As it was, it was sobering to watch as she tried vainly to press the talk button with trembling limbs and stiff fingers.

Kanan let out his breath when Chopper warbled a greeting.

“Change. of. plans. Use. these. coordinates.” She bit off every word. Her voice was far too weak, and even more alarmingly, her teeth had stopped chattering. “Hurry.”

Chopper signed off. His binary squawk reassured Kanan that the droid understood the gravity of the situation. Her message delivered, Hera dropped to the ground, curling into a fetal position.

“Hera!”

If her body had gotten to the point that it wasn’t shivering, there was no way she would ever generate enough heat again. Staggering to her on clumsy legs, he dropped to his knees. Rocks and gravel bit at his skin, but he didn’t notice. Draping his arms over hers, he curled around her back, holding his chest against her back. He was still shivering, violent, uncontrollable movements, his body’s last ditch efforts at self-preservation. But Hera didn’t complain. If he was pressing her into the rocky ground or jerking her roughly, she didn't seem to notice. Either she was too numb or her mind too sluggish.

His mind was too. He could feel the sleepiness creeping in. It would be easier to take a nap then to figure this out, except he knew they would never wake up. So he kept his eyes wide, the same thoughts turning over and over in his mind. _Need to figure out how to get warm? How do I get warm? How do I get Hera warm? Warm? Warm…_

The longer he thought about getting warm, the more he felt like he could almost feel it. The edges of it. Hints of it. Like a mirage or a memory. It was somehow tangled up with how the Force felt when he was wielding it.

Kanan recalled half-remembered stories of masters using the Force to sustain themselves in dire circumstances. They used it to survive on nothing but air and water. Or maybe they used it in place of breathing? Were there stories about using it to keep warm? Was that something that could work?

Kanan struggled to sit up. With nothing left to do, he pulled himself into the best semblance of a meditation pose he could muster, his back to Hera’s reclined one. Shivers and leaden limbs made it difficult to stay upright. He took a deep breath and found the Force. It was, as always, waiting patiently for him, just out of the arm’s length distance he tried to keep it.

As it suffused his being, his mind cleared. The fuzzy thinking fell away and even his numbed senses sharpened. Kanan first became aware of his breathing, the flow of air entering and exiting his lungs. The beat of his heart was still quick as his body attempted to keep him alive. Hera’s was weaker and irregular. Further away, he could sense the otherworldly slowness of hibernating animals’ heartbeats and the quick flicker of tiny, active animals scurrying around above them.

It took him a while to find that open connection, having spent so little time with it in recent years. It would have taken him only a moment as a padawan, but as a rusty adult, he fought against the vulnerability it required. But once he found it, his confidence grew, and he shifted his focus inward, moving smaller. Instead of beating hearts, he sought out the minute humming of his cells, going about with the business of living.

And without trying to control it, because that never worked well, Kanan tried breathing into the tiny pinpricks of energy generation. A request to do more. A supportive moment of encouragement to make more heat. A suggestion that working with the Force was good.

His body responded. A wave of heat passed through him, generating a not unpleasant flush. Kanan felt an immediate warmth across the surface of his skin. After a moment his fingers and toes began tingling as the circulation returned to them. He wanted to sigh in relief, but the part of him that always kept Hera in his thoughts was singularly focused.

“C’mon, H-hera.” His chattering had intensified. “I’ve got a p-plan.”

She didn’t respond, which didn’t surprise him, although her eyes fluttered open to regard him. He slid an arm under her legs and around her shoulders, pulling her awkwardly onto his lap, his limbs still not fully under his control. He brushed her lekku over her shoulders so that he could press his chest against her skin. His arms wrapped around to grip her feet and he rested his cheek against the side of her face.

His shivers weren’t gone, but they weren’t nearly as violent. And now that he had a plan and a freezing captain in his arms, he refocused in the Force, the heat radiating off his skin like a sunburn. He might have had a fantasy or two about what Hera would feel like to have her in his arms, but he never imagined it would feel like this. How spookily unnatural it felt to be holding someone so cold as if she was an inanimate object. That worried him. She needed more heat than he could give her.

He frowned, considering his half-dry parka then picking it up, he threw the hood over his head so that it fell down his back. If he had his hands free, he could have tried to wring out the water. Instead, he used the Force. Water at first streamed down, then dribbled out. But it was still too soggy, and he growled in frustration.

She hummed in response, low in her chest and he froze.

“Hera?”

She didn’t respond. “Come on, stay with me!” They needed just a bit more time until Chopper got here.

Another idea occurred to him. Concentrating in the Force, he located the water seeped into the fibers of the coat. This time instead of squeezing, he pulled at the water molecules, coaxing them downwards, a direction they had some affinity for anyways. Only a trickle came out this time. When his fingers brushed a sleeve, he found it dry.

“Can you move?”

Hera made a sound in acknowledgment, but she struggled to comply, her limbs moving jerkily. He helped her turn to face him, sitting on his lap, her legs wrapped around his hips. Her feet rested on the cold ground, but it couldn’t be helped. The rest of her body was positioned to maximize skin contact with him. He draped the now toasty parka over her head and back as best as he could due to her head tails. He noticed her lekku markings went across her scalp — a detail he had never known about her — as he tucked the edges of the coat in and pulled her against his chest, his arms feverishly hot around her waist. She remained quiet, nearly catatonic for several long minutes as Kanan focused on creating energy. When the tiniest tremor passed through her body, Kanan breathed a sigh of relief. If she was shivering again, she was warming up.

“S-so c-cold,” she said when her chattering resumed, her face buried in his neck. She pressed her balled hands, like blocks of ice against his chest. When the clench of fear left his heart, he felt tenderness bloom instead. She was the reason he was running around making something of his life instead of drinking and carousing himself into oblivion. Her mission wasn't his. But his mission had become to protect her’s. And if it meant holding her in a snow cave until Chopper arrived, he was happy to oblige. 

As Kanan continued to generate heat, Hera no longer felt like a dead weight in his arms. Instead, her skin provided a soothing coolness to his flushed skin. As she grew warm under his touch, he would shift his hands, warming spots on her shoulders, her thighs, between her shoulder blades.When his thumb brushed against her breast, he froze. He had been so focused on the Force that he hadn’t realized that his touches could easily be construed as caresses.He stilled his hands, but suddenly everywhere he put his hands felt too intimate. She was out of the worst of the danger, and he found it harder and harder to meditate.

Instead of the Force, he was aware of how very naked she was. Of how very naked he was. Her breath teased against the sensitive skin of his neck. Her eyelashes flicked against the muscle of his shoulder as she blinked. He risked a glance down at her, the hood of the parka gaping enough for him see her eye dart up to meet his. And it gaped enough for him to see one breast pressed to his chest, and the point of a darkened green nipple grazed his own when she shivered. He felt a sudden flush of heat that had nothing to do with his Force abilities.

He jerked his head away, feeling the shame of being caught staring. Hera rolled her head back into the crook of his neck, and he awkwardly readjusted the parka to trap the heat. But the sight of her breasts wouldn’t leave him, and he couldn’t help but map her soft curves pressed against him with the mental image burned into his mind. His panic and his cock rose in tandem.

In desperation, Kanan began chanting the Jedi code to himself.

_Emotion, yet peace._

_Ignorance, yet knowledge._

_Passion, yet…_

No. Just passion. At the moment, there was only passion.

Definitely, not serenity, as Hera straddled him, her thighs wrapped around his hips, his body betraying him.

He bit hard into his lip as he twitched, going from half mast to full erection. He closed his eyes as he pressed against her, wordlessly letting loose every curse word he knew. His mind was trying to create energy, to create heat, while his cock was trying to procreate.

Hera stiffened for a second at the nudge, then made a sound that wasn’t … offended? Kanan froze, for it sounded more like a hum.

“Sorry,” he said, his voice rough.

She pulled away just enough to look at him, inadvertently rubbed against him in the process. Her face was close enough that Kanan could only focus on one eye at a time, although he was trying hard not to make eye contact at all. A smile tugged at her lips, and her chattering had stopped again. On the one hand, this was good. On the other, survival had been a good distraction from the fact that Kanan now had first-hand experience that Twi’leki women were, with the exception of hair, anatomically very similar to human ones under all the clothes.

“You are full of surprises.” Her voice was quiet and sleepy.

Kanan blinked. He didn’t think she was referring to his physiological response, but he was also surprised that she was ignoring the fact that they were only one hip thrust away from some aggressive cuddling.

And that simply wasn’t how their relationship was. Kanan was crew. Hera was revolutionary. He had her back. She trusted him. His flirting and infatuation had stayed behind on Gorse. Well, the flirting had. Mostly. And by mostly, he meant not all the time. But the infatuation was buried so deep, that he occasionally forgot about it.

“I didn’t realize you were part heater,” she said her head lolling on his shoulder again as if she had had one too many drinks.

He risked a side glance at her, getting a face full oft’chin.

“Ahh, yeah. The Force. I’m revving my metabolism,” he said as trickle of sweat dripped down his temple. “To generate heat,” he added lamely. He shifted uneasily, wondering how much more surreal his day would get, his boner between his captain’s legs while he discussed details about his Jedi abilities that he’d sworn to never use again. 

Hera lifted her head slowly, her cheek grazing Kanan’s face. “It’s like hugging a human Bashka Bun.”

Kanan gulped. Was she flirting with him? She never flirted with him. Witty repartee, yes. Taunting banter, sure. But sleepy sex goddess? That was a new one.

“Bashka Bun?”

“A Rhyl pastry. You know. Rolled up with sugar-spice?”

“So you’re saying I’m gooey and sticky and tend to burn the top of your mouth?”

She flexed her hands open as if testing how well they functioned, sliding her fingers under his arms, her thumbs brushing his nipples. “Hmm, I was thinking warm and sweet.”

Kanan’s eyes slid shut, and he took a slow breath through his nose. Yes. She was definitely flirting. Her bedroom voice was not helping his erection. Or rather it was definitely helping. He prayed she wouldn’t shift her position. Or rather, he prayed fervently she would, to feel her body moving against his. For his part, he remained frozen, too afraid to move. He wondered if his hands were burning holes in her lower back.

“But in your mind I’m food?” he asked. His sweating had intensified, and he could feel it running down his back. Hera's innuendo and his internal furnace were finally getting to his head. Everything felt strange and dreamlike. Almost swoony.

Her nose brushed against his. He felt something gurgle in his belly that was slightly at odds with the blood rushing further south. His breath was ragged.

“Hmmm, good enough to eat.” Her eyes fluttered shut, and her lips touched his.

_I wonder what she tastes like…_

And then he was falling, explosions ringing in his ears, white light blinding him.

When his eyes adjusted, the din lessened, and he started stringing coherent thoughts together, he realized it wasn’t her almost-kiss that had discombobulated him. He had keeled over, his back on the gravel. Sunlight poured through the opening Chopper had made through the roof, as he brought the Phantom in. Chunks of icy snowpack were still falling, as the sound of its repulsorlift filled the tunnel. Hera was kneeling over him, shielding her face from the bright light, the parka knocked off her shoulders.

He blinked trying to shake off the confusion, struggling to rise, hoping to hold onto the memory of how her lips felt. He felt numb again. Not the numb of cold, but the numb of a body shutting down. His limbs weren’t stiff this time, but loose. His vision tunneled to a pinpoint, and he pitched forward, sprawling on the ground again.

Her hands were on his shoulders, helping him to roll over. “Easy. Chopper’s here. We’re going someplace warm, love.”

He must be overheating and hallucinating.Did she just call him love? No, it was hunger and exhaustion. He had just created an immense amount of heat, enough for two naked people. Even with the Force, that took a proportional amount of energy. He needed sustenance.

He shook his head and reached to grab her shirt to pull her to him, too weak to project his voice far. But she was still naked, and he pawed ineffectually at her. She seemed to understand just the same and dipped her head closer.

“Food,” he whispered.

“Yes, food,” she replied and then pressed her lips to his. He closed his eyes, unsure if she understood his meaning, then deciding he didn’t particularly care. Not at this moment. He could always eat later, but it wasn’t every day that Hera kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Hat tip to Eyeloch for help with naming the Twi'leki pastry!
> 
> I think I should note that I spent absolutely zero time on researching hypothermia (I actually spent more time naming food), so if something is glaringly wrong, feel free to point it out. I will probably never go and correct it, but it will be in the comments for posterity. 
> 
> Also, no beta. I do appreciate folks pointing out errors, so don't be shy, and I will attempt to fix the low hanging fruit of mistakes.


End file.
